Straight lines and you: a guide to walking
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I've recently taken to experimenting on my journeys to and from work to see if I can walk in a straight line from any given point A to any given point B in a public place. It's harder than it sounds. As previously written, the path of a pedestrian is far more complex to traverse than even the busiest of roads. Even on the straightest of walkways, there is no shortage of human obstacles for the brisk walker.
There will always be slow walkers. I'm never going to be happy about that, but I accept that some people just don't walk as fast as I do. I have very long legs and tend always to have a destination in mind, and make it my mission to get there. I fully appreciate that others may be in no such similar hurry to get anywhere in particular. Nevertheless, I would appreciate it still further if society's casual strollers wouldn't shorten my lunch break.
More annoying still are the meandering walkers. Your typical meanderer has no specific destination in mind; perhaps even no reason to be where they are at all. Instead, they simply occupy their time by swaggering from one side of the walkway to the other as they walk in their random direction of choice, presumably decided by the wind or the flip of a coin. Indeed, the only thing that separates them from a drunkard is the smell, and in some places this becomes harder to distinguish. Our not-so-beloved meanderer will know precisely the right moment to sway into your path, whether you're trying to overtake them or simply walking the other way. It's a skill, and I can only assume it's taught to a very select group of people from an early age. It's always the same ones.
Next up are those at opposite ends of the age spectrum. Admittedly, babies cannot be blamed directly, but with push chairs comes an implied right of way that all mothers (and occasionally fathers, when they're allowed to drive) are aware of from the moment they leave the hospital, and the rest of us become accustomed to after a couple of near misses and at least one swollen ankle. The elderly, on the other hand, rarely move fast enough to demand right of way. Quite the opposite, in fact. Instead, they usually choose to stop suddenly when you’re walking behind them, presumably while they wait for the pacemaker to kick back in.
What my experiments have taught me is that no amount of planning can prepare you for the journey ahead. There will always be challenges that you need to adapt to, overcome or shove into a wall. While I'd love to see lanes of pedestrian traffic (unidirectional, with fast and slow lanes), unfortunately there's not a council in the country that would go for it, and not a meanderer in the world that would stick to it either. Instead, I hold out for that occasional clear stretch of walkway on which to follow the rarest of straight lines.